


step into the light

by wyvernknighted



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Family, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Trans Laurent, Trans Male Character, gender euphoria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26664685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyvernknighted/pseuds/wyvernknighted
Summary: During his isolated years, Laurent has ample time for self-reflection. He grows to understand his gender identity through trial and error before reuniting with the shepherds.written for the FE:Awakening Trans Weekend (prompt: memory)
Kudos: 21





	step into the light

Laurent leaned into time’s grasp and it held him too tightly, for too long.

He woke up in an unfamiliar world where the sky was bright blue. All of the light assaulted his vision. There was nothing but darkness in the future. The sky had been enveloped in a perpetual blanket of twilight. The most brightness he remembered was from his final moments in that cursed timeline when Naga’s essence filled the room with a shining azure. Before then, the only light he had known which shined brightly were the candles that dotted along the home he once shared with his parents.

When he lived there alone for several years, he took to walking in the dark for a time. His mother was gone, his father dead. He lived alone, ate alone, slept alone. He couldn’t spare the wasted wax to always light his candles for all tasks. With some practice, he memorized the interior of the house so that he could navigate it without need for light. He only used the lights in the morning for his studies, whenever he gauged that time was based on the clocks around the house. Too young to understand that they had fallen out of sync years ago, he did not realize for the longest time the inconsistency of their rhythm. Eventually he taught himself fire magic, and that soft, wavering light was enough to guide his steps without need for wax.

After he finally reunited with the others, and learned that they too had been enveloped in their own pockets of darkness, he wondered if there was something he could have done differently.

But that was the future. This is the past. He blinked rapidly, his eyes adjusting to the harsh light of a hopeful timeline.

His name was not Laurent back then. He did not know who he was, really. It would take moments upon moments of discomfort, coupled with the ease of euphoria when someone would interpret his frame, obscured by mage’s garb, as masculine. He realized it with a crash one day. Well, he realized it after the crash, after he fell from the teetering stool upon which he was balancing to reach a faraway book. With that cover brought many others, until he chanced upon a children’s fable of a knight. An assumed maiden abandoned that lot and took up arms as a knight. The knight cut his locks and donned armor to defend his village against waves of bandits. He was so consumed by the story, he did not break from his trance until the librarian noticed the pile of overturned books and marched towards him with a stern expression. He was pushed out the door, but they still let him borrow the book.

After reading the book in one sitting, he stayed up that night contemplating the limits of fiction. Perhaps it was a mere story, but that reality could just as easily come to fruition in his own life, could it not? Was it wrong for him to imagine such an existence?

At precisely 4 o’clock in the morning (he knew because the clocks in his inn room were actually well kept), he stood before the mirror with scissors in hand. His hands gripped them with the anxiety of someone lacking any experience in the cosmetic arts, but still he struggled on. The scissor’s dull edge tore more than cut his hair. At the end, it looked like his hair had been mauled by a cruel guard dog. And yet, he could see the curve of his jaw, the soft roundness of his cheek. Even with his hair torn to bits, he felt infinitely better than with the overgrown locks he had worn up to that point.

In the morning, he sought out a proper barber to assess the damage. Apparently, it was recoverable. Soon enough, he was beaming at his reflection with all of the amazement he had felt that morning enhanced tenfold.

He returned to the library with a mission. After ample apologies, he was able to persuade the librarian to help him search for his requested materials. The squat man squinted at the keywords with a faint frown before he remembered the correct verbiage. He bustled off with a whistle, the excitement of a satisfying find guiding his course. Laurent merely sat with his arms wrapped like a shield across his chest. He knew that the librarian knew what he looked like the day before. He did not linger on what that might mean, however, because the librarian returned soon enough with a tall stack of texts.

Laurent was alone once more, but not really. As he flipped through the pages, he found people like him in different words and versions. Histories that were once unknown to him leapt from the page, bringing thoughts long dormant to light. His finger traced along a word, recognizing it as that which he needed. There were fictive accounts, but also monographs historical, sociological, personal. He spent hours at that small reading table, the stack of unread books to his right diminishing as the pile on his left of read texts continued to grow. He knew that the librarian continued to glance in his direction, but he could not leave until he had squeezed as much knowledge from those pages as possible. He had found a starting place, however meager, and he would trace it until he found another proximal point of knowledge.

He left the library that day with more questions than answers. But some answers are not found in books, though he would only learn that later. The most important thing was that the idea had formed in his mind. The door had unlocked, creaked along its hinges, and he could look through its opening and ponder what might lie beyond it. He wondered and imagined and dreamed, and knew that he was not the only one.

Laurent was not the first name he used. It was somewhere near the middle of the list. He tried many names during his travels. On his first day in a new village, he would introduce himself with an option. It was the potential the name contained which mattered. The syllables were heavy on his tongue, his mind struggling to acquiesce the different words as his true signifier. Even when he used Laurent, at first the name was merely that. A collection of letters strung together which sounded coherent when said aloud. It astounded him, how disconnected he felt from the different options that he tried. But Laurent, that name came with it a slight twinge, like a knife pressed gently upon his heart. It cut into him with a tenderness that he did not realize at first. It was around the third time he used it that he felt it resonate, felt that softness billow in his chest with a rush. _Oh_. He thought. _This is it_.

And then for several years onward, he was Laurent. He wore his hair short and kept his mage’s robes loose. With some research, he attempted using a stave to change his hormonal levels with minimal success. From then on, it was the herbal route. But even though it was less potent, the medicine still prompted changes which left him ecstatic. When his voice dropped, even the smallest amount, he felt a warmth in his heart that he knew was happiness. It was curious, how little of that he had felt before.

When he approached the village in the desert, and saw a woman with deep red hair and glasses, he almost stumbled in his desperate run towards her.

She turned around and did not recognize him. It was ironic. Even if this woman had been his original mother, she would not have recognized him. Laurent did not waste time reflecting on how that thought twisted his heart. Instead, he stood before her with trembling hands, offering a ring and a request.

“Might I accompany you in your in search? I feel certain that your help will lay exposed that which has eluded me alone.” Though within his words lingered a deep need for acceptance, he managed to mask his tone into something resembling neutrality.

Miriel pursed her lips and then adjusted her glasses. It was a nervous tic of hers that he continued to replicate himself. He suppressed the urge to mimic her actions out of his own anxiety.

“Hm. I worry your hypothesis lacks a certain scientific rigor…” He felt his stomach drop at those words. But she continued. “And yet, there exists the possibility I am in error on this count…So yes. You are welcome to join us, Laurent.”

When she said his chosen name, he felt a shock run through his chest. He had long resigned to the fact that he should not hope for the joy of being known by those he lost in the future. He simply could not suppress the bright happiness which flooded his face. Though it confused Miriel, she gave him a patient smile.

That day, they found several villages and uncovered the goddess staff amongst the shifting sands. But the greatest discovery that Laurent made was that he could be known, truly, by his family at last.

It had haunted him for years now that his true mother and father would never know his chosen name. It added another layer of grief that he hadn’t expected—the loss of that chance for them to truly know him. He wondered for the longest time if either Miriel or Frederick would have accepted him. Reflecting upon the cursed future from which he came, he was not certain he would have gotten the chance to understand himself in time to tell them. Identity is a fickle thing easily repressed, especially in harsh times when the mind is burdened with overwhelming trauma. He could not claim that his realization would have come about in the same way with the same emotional intensity. He knew himself well enough, knew that he was terrible at self-reflection even in the best of times. He was the sort to focus outward instead of inward, to document the feelings of others before considering his own. He recognized that wondering what his true parents thoughts on the matter might have been was wasted effort. And yet, it was a depth he continually slid underneath each time he lingered upon that hopeful train of thought.

But upon hearing his mother say his name, he realized that this was another chance. Perhaps it was only a slim comfort, to be able to know this version of his parents and not those from the future. But Laurent had been working with the fragments of a life for a while now. He wanted to be able to feel whole, if only for a little bit. When Miriel called him by his true name, beckoning him to join the other shepherds, he did not hesitate to follow.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that it’s somewhat unrealistic for a trans person to be properly represented in canonical textual accounts (though this is changing thankfully!). I have worked in libraries for a while so I Am Aware of the problems library collections have with transgender representation and inclusion. But this is fan fiction, and I do what I want and I want Laurent to be that guy who learned about trans identity first and foremost from a random book at the library. This is very important to me.
> 
> I have a fic coming out tomorrow that focuses on Lucina realizing they are nonbinary, and it features some more discussion of Laurent’s transmasculine experiences. Look forward to that.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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